even advocated an idea that if bonus is a deferred wage then merge it the salary and pay every month and avoid the hassle of industrial unrest and strikes for bonus once and for all times to come. Remove deferred-ness
from it and merge it in wage. Let there be agitations on Wage and not yearly agitations for bonus.
Any Economist or Accountant will readily agree to this suggestion as a method which is logical. Yet although logical, this method it is
not practical. It is far away from ground reality. It took time for me to understand this truth.
Iput this matter to late Gajananarao Gokhale of Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh as an impeccable logical question. He brought me to ground. He said
- our workers are not accustomed to save every month and create a reserve
for the holidays and year- end expenses, Whatever money comes to their hands it is spent immediately. Then lump sum money at Ganapati or Diwali festival becomes a necessity. Where will the workers have the money to spend on buying clothes for themselves and their children or buying some utility vessels? Workers’ need at that Point of time is availability of lump sum money. According to mathematical approach it is possible to set aside the monthly sum but in actual practice many of the workers are not in a position to do that. The idea of Provident fund is to collect the monthly sums from the People and return to them the total at the time of retirement as lump sum with interest. To collect these compulsory savings and investing them in Proper securities and returning the amount at the end of the service is therefore done by the government agencies. As a matter of fact people like me with accountancy background feel that they would earn better interest than public provident or Superannuation fund or Gratuity fund if they could manage the compulsory savings themselves, Some self- employed persons often do that but the common experience is that it is a job which involves a lot of hassle and all cannot manage it. People invest in the share market through Mutual funds for that reason only. There are many cases who were attracted by higher rates of interest the people have lost their entire Principal savings. Money in hand has a Propensity to be spent and hence compulsory savings and investment is socially desirable objective. It is therefore socially sensible to get a deferred wage by way of Bonus once in a year. That need cannot be satisfied by monthly Payment alone as a part of the remuneration.
Once this thought is embedded in your mind and comprehended by you then you can understand why many employers are very stingy in the normal Wage bargaining but liberal in Bonus settlements. In accordance
with these social realities then it becomes helpful to aim to keep wage
settlements as separate and at reasonable level. Bonus settlements
are kept separate annual agreements. Some like me learn it after a lot
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